Movies: A humorous Bond spoof

CHRIS HEWITTKnight Ridder Newspapers

Published Friday, July 18, 2003

I don't care what the context is, a line like "All right, so I was wrong about the archbishop's bottom" is always going to be funny.

That line pretty much sums up the understated, droll appeal of "Johnny English": It's very English (the delicate use of the word "bottom"), it's mildly naughty (the archbishop), it's defensive, and, since it's spoken in front of an outraged crowd at a state ceremony, its British reserve makes it even funnier. The line is spoken by Rowan Atkinson (he's Mr. Bean, and he still may be best known in America as the priest in "Four Weddings and a Funeral"), playing the title role in this spoof of James Bond movies.

On a guess, there have now been twice as many Bond spoofs as Bonds proper and we really don't need another one, especially since the Austin Powers movies have gotten so much mileage out of their spoofery. "Johnny" is never as inspired as the best moments of the Powers movies, but it's cleaner and more consistent than they are.

The joke is that Johnny is the anti-Bond. Whereas 007 is perfect and knows it, Johnny is incompetent and blissfully unaware of it. "The Spy Who Tripped Over Me," he is to screwing up what Lance Armstrong is to pedaling, and the joke of "Johnny English" -- the only joke, really -- is that somehow he succeeds in spite of his incompetence.

Atkinson, who wears the perpetual expression of a man who's just realized he is supposed to be somewhere else, is the main show here, but he's not the only show. John Malkovich plays the villain, a foppish Frenchman who's attempting to swipe the British throne, and he's so operatically vexed in the part that you wish they'd hire him to be the bad guy in the next real Bond movie.